


Leave Me Behind

by MaddieandChimney



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24727414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney
Summary: Buck knows that his sister isn't ready to go back to work, but he still doesn't expect to find her rocking back and forth, bleeding, in her apartment.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22
Collections: Madney One-Shots





	Leave Me Behind

Maddie thought she was doing better. She was going to individual therapy _and_ group therapy, she was getting out of bed even when she didn’t want to, she had found it easier to smile and to laugh, to think about life post-Doug. She had felt ready enough to go back to work and start moving on with her life, Doug was dead and she had fought so hard to survive. Too hard to find herself curled up in a tight ball on her bedroom floor as her brother paced back and forth, on the phone to someone.

Doug was dead. That was what she keeps trying to remind herself as she wraps her arms tighter around her knees and closes her eyes. Doug was dead and he was still ruining her life. She had fought her way through one shift at the dispatch centre before she had to phone in sick again, apologising over and over to Sue even when the woman said she completely understood. That Maddie just wasn’t…. ready.

Even her brother had recognised she was pushing herself too hard, too soon.

She had chosen to ignore him, pushed herself to go to work and then to attempt a second chance with Chimney. It had been too much, far too soon and it had left her heartbroken because nothing would ever be the same again. Not just between her and Chimney but for them, too.

Some of the guilt had eased over the three weeks but seeing him for the first time since they were both released from hospital, it had brought it all crashing back. How for two days, she had thought he was dead – knowing he would have been alive and unhurt if he had never met her. He was a good, kind man who deserved so much more than anything she could ever give him.

“You should have left me there.” The words fall from her lips the moment her brother drops to his knees and grabs her bleeding arm, the phone discarded on the floor. It’s the first time she’s spoken since he barged into her apartment uninvited and found her and the words do nothing to stop his panic.

“Left you where, Maddie? Left you— with Doug?” She nods her head in response, barely flinching when he presses down on the fresh wound. She doesn’t understand it herself, she doesn’t expect him too – she had fought so damn hard to survive, only to change her mind a few weeks later. It was too hard, she was too exhausted, life was passing her by too quickly and all she wanted to do was sleep. But when she slept, all she could see was Chimney bleeding out on the courtyard or she was being forced to relive every single moment she spent fighting for her life since she had met him sixteen years previously.

“Maddie, why would I have left you there?” His voice is desperate, “Maddie, do I need to call 911?” She thought he already had, she can’t imagine who else he would be on the phone too, if anyone else other than her brother would care if she just disappeared. “Hey, please talk to me, please—I don’t know what to do right now, okay? I don’t—Madeline, there’s a lot of blood but Chimney s-said it d-doesn’t sound too bad… I need you to tell me what to do, please?”

Chimney.

He had been on the phone to Chimney, _her_ Chimney. But he wasn’t hers, he would never be hers. Doug had stolen that from them when he had plunged the knife into his stomach three times, leaving him bleeding out outside her apartment. Whatever they were about to have, what they could have had, was stolen from them the moment he almost died because of her. Even if Doug had been the one holding the knife, she couldn’t convince herself otherwise that it was her fault – if she hadn’t run away, if she hadn’t let him get too close then he would have been okay. And really, that was all she ever wanted, for people to stop getting hurt because of her.

“It won’t need stitches.” She mumbles, “J-just wanted to feel something.”

“I knew you were—” He stops himself before he can finish, both of them knowing it’s no time for ‘I told you so’ or ‘if you had only listened to me’ talks right then, no matter how much he wants to say it aloud. “D-do you want to die? Is that what you mean? I-I should have left you there… to die?”

She hates the vulnerability in her brothers voice, leaning her head against her knees as she just thinks – not for the first time – of letting her eyes fall to a close next to her husband. He had always promised her that was how it ended, the two of them dying together – maybe she had been kidding herself when she thought a life after him was possible.

“I don’t know.” Is the answer she finally settles on because it’s the closest thing to the truth she can manage. She doesn’t know if she _can_ live with the overwhelming hatred she feels for herself – for killing him, for the stranger at the garage dying trying to save her, for Chimney coming so close to death, for the sadness she sees in Buck’s face every time he looks at her. She also doesn’t know if she should die, not after fighting so damn hard to not die in the snow next to him.

The answer terrifies him, she can tell by the way his hand is shaking, and if she dared to look at him, she’d see the tears rolling down his face. He doesn’t have time to answer, disturbed only by the breathless voice of Chimney.

“S-sorry, the door was open and…” There was a slight pained edge to his voice, and she looks up only to see him gently pressing his hand to his side before he drops to his knees next to her. She didn’t want him to see her this way, not when the last time they had seen each other they agreed they needed a minute. “Hey Buck, let go of her arm for a second for me, go get her first aid kit – it’s in the kitchen, top right cupboard, okay?” He’s speaking to her brother as he would a child, but he responds by releasing the grip he had on her and scrambling to his feet.

“Chimney – I think we need to get some h-help, I-I asked her… if she wanted to kill herself s-she… she said she didn’t know? I think this is beyond me and you—”

“Just go get the first aid kit, let’s get her cleaned up first.”

They’re talking about her as though she’s not there but she doesn’t comment, instead she stares blankly at the face of the man who so easily could have died because of her. There’s nothing other than concern and kindness in his eyes, “You’re going to be okay, Maddie.” It sounds like he means it, like he’s so sure that he’s right and she wants to believe him more than anything.

“We’re going to be okay.”


End file.
